Beach emergency numbers
Grievance
Mrs Lisa Munday (Dawesville) (9:54 am): I rise today with a request that will make a life-saving difference to my community, to the people of Western Australia and also our feathered, finned and four-legged. My grievance is to Minister Hon Jackie Jarvis. I thank Minister Beazley for taking it on her behalf. It is about safety, responsiveness and protection at our beaches, estuaries and waterways. Beach emergency number signs were first introduced in Western Australia in December 2017, after Ben Gerring was tragically killed in a shark attack at a beach in my electorate in 2016. After this tragedy, Ben's brother Rick worked hard to have these established to assist emergency services to locate people in distress on a beach. These signs are now often used by 000 call takers and they bear a unique beach emergency number, BEN code, installed at the beach access points, boat ramps, jetties and estuaries—places people love, but where an emergency can become tragedy without very precise location information. When someone is caught in a rip, drowning or in shock, locating them quickly matters. The BEN system helps emergency services by giving callers a specific code to quote when calling 000. In that way, BEN signs are already saving lives and reducing confusion and delay in emergencies. There are now 1,800 BEN signs installed across Western Australia, including in the Dawesville and Mandurah electorates, which hold one of the largest shares. The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development has worked with 42 local government authorities to implement this initiative.
I want to share a story, because these are not just numbers. A young girl, Matilda Harris, who is a junior lifesaver with the Mandurah Surf Life Saving Club, and three of her lifesaving friends, Lexi, Ruby and Zara, have been going to schools to teach children about swimming between the flags, recognising rips and undertows, sun safety and more. Matilda created this program after her family visited Bremer Bay in January of this year to a nearby beach where her youngest brother and his friend were swept out to sea in a rip. Her father, Rick, her older brother, Brooklyn and his mate jumped in to rescue them and managed to get the two boys back to shore, but the rip caught Rick, Brooklyn and Leonard, again, and swept them further out. Rick began to struggle. Despite being exhausted, Brooklyn went to his dad's aid. Together with Leonard and another beachgoer, they managed to bring Rick back into shore with the help of a small inflatable raft. Rick was non-responsive when they brought him in and the family began CPR. Matilda ran to the road and spent precious minutes trying to locate the relevant BEN sign so paramedics could find them. Tragically, Rick passed away. He heroically saved his son and his son's best friend, but lost his own life in the process. Matilda's work is now a legacy to her father.
Local legend Danny Willmott came to me with a suggestion that BEN signs should be mapped onto Google Maps to make locating them a lot easier. He raised it with me some months ago on behalf of Western Australian Seabird Rescue. He explained that in many bird rescues, incidents or wildlife emergencies, the community struggles to describe precisely where they are. Having BEN signs mapped and easily accessible would help volunteers like him, and as I realised, listening to Matilda's story, it also would save precious time to assist emergency services to locate members of the community like Rick, which is exactly what Rick Gerring wanted to achieve when BEN signs were first created on behalf of his brother.
I am asking the minister for her help, via DPIRD, to take the next step and have all BEN signs digitally mapped, specifically added to Google Maps and similar platforms, and easy to access for much of the population to have them available on every smartphone. Imagine how life saving it could be when someone calls 000 and the operator asks for their precise location and BEN sign. The caller could go onto Google Maps to see their blue dot location and work out the code immediately without leaving the scene. It would help locals, tourists and people under stress or disorientated. Most people carry smartphones these days. Many already use Google Maps to find their way. BEN codes on Google Maps could reduce confusion about which beach access point is the right one. We already have the location data for BEN signs. It is publicly available via the Data WA platform at DPIRD mapping. Technically, the information exists. What we need now is authorisation, collaboration, agreement with Google and a plan to implement.
In areas like the electorates of Dawesville and Mandurah, Rhys Williams, the member for Mandurah, and I are deeply committed to beach safety. We have among the highest number of BEN signs of any electorate, yet if digital mapping is not incorporated, we are missing an easy opportunity to use technology to respond quicker, to reassure families, and to support young surf lifesavers like Matilda and community volunteers like WA Seabird Rescue. I would encourage DPIRD to partner with Google Maps and others to have every BEN sign geocoded and visible on digital platforms, labelled clearly. I thank Minister Jarvis through Minister Beazley for taking my grievance and I look forward to her support and continued advocacy of this important digital mapping work.
Ms Hannah Beazley (Victoria Park—Minister for Local Government) (9:59 am): I thank the member for her grievance and her advocacy on this important matter. I also want to acknowledge the efforts of Matilda from the member's electorate, who sounds like a remarkable person doing very important work. I also acknowledge Matilda's father, Rick, who was a much-loved member of the Mandurah Surf Life Saving Club. His loss was felt deeply across the community. Clearly, this grievance means a lot to the people from the member's community and I am glad the member has brought it to the attention of the house. I am pleased to be able to respond on behalf of Minister Jarvis as well as the Cook Labor government more broadly, because building safe and inclusive communities is a key priority of the Cook Labor government.
We want all Western Australians to feel secure at home, at work and in the community. This includes working to support our emergency services to protect our community. Beach emergency number, or BEN signs, are an important part of that picture, as the member has clearly set out. BEN signs are funded as part of the government's shark hazard mitigation strategy. The Cook Labor government has implemented one of the strongest evidence-based shark hazard mitigation strategies in the world to allow Western Australians to enjoy the ocean with confidence. The government allocated $17.3 million in the 2024–25 state budget to continue supporting WA's shark hazard mitigation strategy. This funding includes $13.2 million to continue aerial surveillance through helicopter patrols as well as funding to provide integrated communication systems and vital frontline safety services such as jet ski response teams. An additional $4.7 million has been allocated to continue delivering WA's sharks hazard mitigation strategy through investment in the SharkSmart WA app, the shark monitoring network and shark tagging program, the personal shark deterrent rebate scheme and beach enclosures.
The member may be interested to know that BEN signs actually started in the member's electorate. In 2016, a fatal shark attack in Falcon highlighted challenges for emergency services locating specific beach access points, which contributed to delayed responses. In December 2017, following an election commitment, the WA Labor government allocated $1.35 million for a grants program to support coastal local governments to install BEN signs. The grants program provided grants of up to $25,000 for metropolitan and $50,000 for regional local governments. In 2020, the program expanded to 12 additional coastal local governments north of Geraldton. Today, as the member pointed out in her remarks, 1,795 BEN signs have been installed along WA's coast, with an additional 62 signs planned for 2025–26.
In the City of Mandurah, there are a total of 154 signs installed. Each BEN sign has a unique code based on an area prefix followed by a one to four digit number. That code is linked to the coordinates of the location of the sign. The official location name, if there is one, the address, suburb and nearest intersection are also on each sign. These signs provide specific location information that is vital when emergency services are deployed in the event of a shark sighting, shark attack or other beach emergencies. The information is also integrated into computer-aided dispatch systems used by emergency services, including the ambulance, police and Surf Life Saving WA. In fact, over 3,850 emergency calls have referenced BEN signs, including 1,722 calls to WA Police and 2,133 calls to St John Ambulance. Clearly, these signs are a very important part of community infrastructure that are widely used by the community.
The member raised a good point about data integration into common platforms like Google Maps. I can update the house that the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development has been in discussions with Google, as it has been lobbying Google to have the data integrated for ease of access. Unfortunately, the response from Google so far, keeping in mind that it is a private company, has been that it does not support evacuation or emergency points of interests in its maps. The main reason it has provided for this is that the information needs to be current and up to date to be fully reliable when needed. However, I can say that Minister Jarvis has heard the case put forward by the member and her constituents and has agreed to take up this advocacy herself with Google by writing to Google asking for this advice to be reconsidered. In the meantime, something we can all do and that I would encourage everyone in this house to do is help promote the SharkSmart app that is published by the government. The app, which is free and maintained by DPIRD, has a map feature available with all the BEN signs for people to access on the move. In addition, we can all encourage others when visiting the beach to take note of the closest BEN sign location and information and even take a photo of it on their phone, because nobody wants to see another tragic incident like that which Matilda's family went through. I thank the member again for raising this grievance in the house.
